Stephen K. Hayes

Stephen K. Hayes has spent his entire adult life in the pursuit of perfection through the study of the Asian martial arts and spiritual traditions. He was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1949, and grew up in Dayton, Ohio. He has lived and traveled throughout North America, Japan, Europe, the Arctic, China, Tibet, Nepal, and India. A husband and father of two daughters, he is a writer, teacher, and ardent student of life. Stephen K. Hayes began his martial arts career in Ohio as a teenager in the 1960s. In 1985, he was elected to the prestigious Black Belt Hall of Fame, for his years of pioneering work introducing the Japanese ninja martial arts to the Western world. In 1993, Grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi of Chiba-ken, Japan, awarded him the extremely rare honor of ju-dan 10th degree Black Belt in the nine historical traditions of the Bujinkan Dojo martial arts. Cited from SKHQuest.com.